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mellenur

Bringing Scandinavia To Tampines! ~5A Reno Blog~

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Just posting updates.

Not much happening except screeding. I blame it on the holidays haha!

Honestly, the pace is very worrying. I hope they can finish tiling by this week.

I'm only tiling my service yard and 2 toilets, all others will have vinyl flooring so just need to get the screeding done.

We went a little crazy at the IKEA sale 2 weeks ago when they were offering $35 off for every $300 purchase so we already bought the items below. Now we have a big headache where to house them as IKEA is making the first delivery this Thursday for armchair (bought from As-Is so it's already assembled) and Trendig chair. Next delivery is next Monday and was supposed to be sent to the new house but my contractor said cannot place there cos the works will be very dusty. Sigh.....what am I going to do? I'm considering getting a storage unit at Storhub or something. Which means more money.....

Trying to cheer myself up by posting pics of what we bought:

Armchair from As-Is

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Dining chair. I'm getting 6 different black ones so these are 2 of them.

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Kitchen island. Was going to ask contractor to build this as part of carpentry but it was going to cost $2000+. So we scrapped it then we saw this as IKEA. So we decided to get it. Right after paying for it during the sale, I walked back in and found an assembled piece with "scratches" (I couldn't see any) so I refunded my purchase and bought the As-Is one instead for a $400. Since it's assembled, this is also a headache where to house!

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That's the exact same armchair I'm eyeing! So comfy right! ;)

 

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Join 46,923 satisfied homeowners who used renotalk quotation service to find interior designers. Get an estimated quotation

Have you considered Elmark? They have quite alot of designs and we've bought our black fans there. We've opted for the black power coated stainless steel ones which cost more but their motors come with 10 yrs warranty thus we were sold. We had previously bought the same model in our previous home and have used the fans daily for 5 yrs, 7 days a week for more than 8 hours a day.. Had no issues with it. With you numbers, I am sure they are more than happy to extend a discount to you.

Thanks dearie, will send hubby to have a look at it today. I think part of the problem is we cannot decide if we want a white or black fan, or maybe can we live with a grey fan. Not that there's anything wrong with grey but just that I want to stick to the monochrome palette as much as possible. Plus a black fan doesn't show when it's dirty so I can get a little lazy with the cleaning.

We initially bluffed Ikea's delivery team that we will be out of town for 2 weeks so that bought us some 'free storage' time.

What an idea! Thanks Makan, I will try that. Not sure if possible now though cos hubby already spoke to them and it seems they've opened our case. Will try anyway.

That's the exact same armchair I'm eyeing! So comfy right! ;)

yes mad love for this armchair! and much more comfy than Papa Bear imho. I liked it in red/vermilion but the As-Is set was in grey so I settled for it. I'm such a sucker for deals!

 

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updates from the new house:

new store room up with the hollow blocks. we actually hacked down the initial store room because we wanted more light into the kitchen, and placed the store right next to the house entrance. it has a similar layout as our current punggol house bomb shelter/store room but much smaller. hubby told me that HDB officer called him and said we cannot have this "room" but we explained it's not a bedroom but a store room. i told the contractor to deal with the HDB officer, still pending a reply.

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study room resized. putting up a glass panel where the space is and sliding/bifold nyatoh doors on the right side. i'm getting very worried about the living area (left area in the pic) not getting enough light. living area is between the store room and study.

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common toilet tiles up. i LOVE it. looks much nicer in real life. we're using bifold door for this toilet so the tiler left a strip at the entrance kerb for the bifold frame to fit in. hubby is not so happy with it, he keep saying we should use glass door but our contractor say the shower area is very close to the door so the water might splash and trickle out onto the floor. we're using HERF outside but i really don't want to test their durability! also noticed that the frame of the toilet have no tiles - very odd because in my current punggol house we have tiles on the frame but we're using glass door so not sure if that's the reason. anyone else with feedback?

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MBR toilet. we initially wanted blue swimming pool mosaic tiles at the shower area in this toilet where the cement screed currently is but yesterday we realized it totally won't match! don't know what hubby was thinking but i blamed it on the fatigue of looking at tiles as we decided after like about 4 hours! so we asked our contractor nicely if we can just have the same white shiny tiles instead and the "carpet" tiles as the accent in a recessed area of the wall. luckily he said OK. this toilet will have no door because the wardrobe is built just outside so hubby wants to use the sliding door of wardrobe to cover the toilet. sigh..i'm not too happy about that but he's not ready to listen. will pick this battle another day :)

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closeup of the "carpet" floor tiles:

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Edited by mellenur
 
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on other news, my 32-inch undermount Kraus sink which I ordered last Friday from Amazon arrived just 3 days later on Monday night! Love it! Now waiting for the Kohler faucet to arrive...

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Great choice of toilet floor tiles mellenur, and your furniture you bought is really fitting the theme as well. For the door frame at the toilet, our contractor cement screeded it before plastering over to make it smooth, thus we don't have any tiles there. Don't think it looks weird or is impractical imo. In your case, it hasn't been plastered yet so it still looks very raw. Should be fine in time to come! :jammin:

Judging by your selection of tiles, colours and furniture, your house will really be outstanding. Looking forward to more of your updates.

 

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Wow those tiles! Im mad abt prints and I wish I could have those tiles in my home too! How did u manage to convince ur hubby to go for those tiles? Or does he like them too??

U are really tempting me to get a Kraus!!

 

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thanks vicx1234 and redder. please don't be surprised that my hubby picked those tiles. my initial picks was something very plain like light and dark grey or something like that. i'm very conservative lol!

if the kraus sink meets your needs, i strongly urge you to go get it. in fact, engage amazon live chat and ask them if they can waive your shipping fees. they waived mine, but could be cos it was my first time ordering. it should ship for free to singapore but i think it's very heavy that's why i had to ask them since it wasn't automatically done. before this purchase, i went to home niche near ubi and was keen to get a promo of $298 for lizen sink with damixa faucet. that would have been my second choice. just sharing ideas :)

 

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last night i met with a contact for woodworks referred to me by another RT blogger. he created a wooden table for her. i think a few other bloggers also using him.

was planning to sand down my mahogany dining table and bed in my current house in a bid to cut costs since it's good wood. but it seems the table top is not all solid wood so if sand down, i run the risk of making it thin and unsafe. i wanted to sand it down to rough it up from its current smooth finishing so i don't need to worry about scratching the surface in future. initially we'd wanted to get a brand new solid wood table but felt it was a waste of this current one. getting a new table in this size with teak would cost just under $2000.

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same thing with the bed. it's solid wood in some parts and it is our matrimonial bed so quite sad to see it go. the other option was chemical wash but i'm not sure what color it would turn to. and the chemical wash is more expensive than sanding it down.

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decision...decisions...

 

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thanks vicx1234 and redder. please don't be surprised that my hubby picked those tiles. my initial picks was something very plain like light and dark grey or something like that. i'm very conservative lol!

if the kraus sink meets your needs, i strongly urge you to go get it. in fact, engage amazon live chat and ask them if they can waive your shipping fees. they waived mine, but could be cos it was my first time ordering. it should ship for free to singapore but i think it's very heavy that's why i had to ask them since it wasn't automatically done. before this purchase, i went to home niche near ubi and was keen to get a promo of $298 for lizen sink with damixa faucet. that would have been my second choice. just sharing ideas :)

How can we not be surprised?? Lol!

Didn't know we can negotiate for free shipping! I wanted to get some copper cookware but the shipping cost alone was $100+! Maybe I can try to get them to waive it for me. Tks for the tip babe! I am seriously considering the Kraus now and I'm in love with their apron sink. My hubby's gonna kill me hahahaha!

 

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I don't have much to update.

Whole of last week, finishing up of tiling works and plastering was done. I'm tempted to type only plastering but I have no knowledge of this business so I'm not sure if my expectations were too high. To be fair, the plastering is very good and thorough! Some tiling works in the toilet were outstanding for a week plus because the windows were pending approval to be changed. After I chased my contractor and asked to be provided a HDB contact on Thursday, the approval came within hours. Apparently there were safety concerns as I'd initially wanted a top hung window at the common toilet but that opening faces my service yard such that if I swung the window out, I may hit someone's head on the other side. It was so so simple, if you'd have told me, I would have said fine, don't do it. Just change to normal louvers pane. Oh well, approval is in now and hopefully windows will come in at some point this week and tiling works will be completed.

Plumber came in on Friday and worked till very late but still couldn't finish everything. I spotted the below in the common toilet, please tell me I'm not overreacting when I said it's ugly and should be re-done. I've never experienced this because my current house is BTO and had concealed pipes. The reason for the "cross over" is because of the hot and cold pipe flow. All these pipes will not be concealed so I'd have to live with the sight below. I asked my contractor and he suggested I speak to the plumber direct. Hubby then called and explained how we thought it should be corrected. All my guidance was just prev experience by renotalkers. Sigh...give me ideas lah, Mr Plumber! I suggested that the "cross over" be done at the corner where there's a bidet or behind the WC so not so obvious. Plus I had to ask my contractor to re-tile those with holes due to wrong drilling. :curse:

So I turn to you my trusty renotalkers, any one who has experience the same case below and can advise? :help:

Problem is that the lower pipe is hot water so to link to my shower mixer, it has to cross upwards but blocked by top pipe cold water thus the unsightly bending.

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Edited by mellenur
 

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By shifting the hot pipe up above the cold piping? ;)

i wish it was that easy! hah, in fact it was my first suggestion. then plumber said the cold water already piped to the mbr toilet which is adjacent to this. what i feel is there is lack of planning. if i was there, i would have drawn up like a plan on how to run it neatly without needing to fix a problem later --> which is exactly what we have now!

again, my disclaimer is i'm not sure if i have oversimplified it.

Edited by mellenur
 

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Guys, need some help and contacts :help::help::help:

I have a mahogany bed frame and table in my current house which I was planning to either paint white or do white wash and bring over to the new house because it's solid mahogany wood. Do you know anyone who can do this?

So far I've contacted K of Wah King and Tommi Furniture. K came to my house to view the items almost 2 weeks ago but have gone silent. I've tried calling and sms-ing and his last reply was he's in hospital. Tommi gave me a quote to whitewash the items at the cost I paid for them - table was quoted $3,500. :jawdrop:

Both won't work for me, and for now since I cannot contact K, I will have to look for others.

Anyone else can help? My table is below.

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House updates:

- Toilet louvre windows up in common and MBR toilet

- Sliding window at store room also up. Although frosted, because it's right under the corridor lamp, it lights up and I can see through from the corridor. Pro - natural light for the store. Con - no privacy!

- Wiring works mostly done

- Ceiling works almost done pending study room and touch up non-straight lines

Still outstanding and happening today:

- Tiling of walls surrounding toilet windows

- Changing those tiles with drill marks due to plumber

- Completion of piping works by plumber

- Citygas man coming to install the gas pipe

No pics on above because we came at night and the bulb source has been removed.

I'm so happy that things are suddenly whizzing along!

Next week most works will be halted due to CNY holidays.

 

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